A cat's favor

Seth returned a few hours later to find Panther still in her cat form. The moment he appeared inside the room, the tiny cat dove into the water and hid behind Caitlin.

“Seth, can we speak about this?” asked Panther in an anxious voice.

Seth raised an eyebrow and looked between the two as he asked: “Did you not manage to recover enough energy to recover your human form? Well, no matter, your cat form will also do.”

His words made the cat’s eyes widen, and even Caitlin had a weird look as she instinctively moved her hands to protect Panther behind her.

“No, no. I can turn.” Added Panther immediately when she noticed Seth coming closer, her tiny body gathering energy from the pool as it grew in size. Her paws turned into human limbs, and the hair on her body slowly receded inside her skin as her size grew to that of an average woman.

She quickly covered herself using her hands and avoided looking directly at Seth as she asked: “But can you give me a moment to get ready?”

Seth frowned momentarily before shaking his head. “I still don’t know if it will work, so the faster we do this, the better. If we fail, we can look for other ways to recover your lifespan.”

As Panther nodded with her head lowered, Caitlin stood up from the pool and said: “I’m leaving then.”

“No, I need your help too.”

Seth’s words made Panther lift her eyes, revealing her bright red face, as she asked: “Can’t we at least be alone?”

Seeing her reaction, Seth felt something was wrong. Looking at Caitlin, he asked: “What did you tell her?”

Caitlin, seeing his reaction, also understood that she might have made a mistake and said: “That you want to mark her?”

Seth’s eyebrow twitched, and he sighed. “That’s not.. I want to use my lust and perception energies in combination with your life-and-death ones to try and revitalize her soul.”

“Oh..” exclaimed Caitlin, realizing she misunderstood Seth’s intention and looking apologetically toward Panther.

Panther also caught up to the fight that Caitlin might have made a mistake, but she still had to ask: “So, you’re not planning to have sex with me?”

“You’re a cat.” Said Seth, blinking incredulously, causing Panther to blush and lower her head again.

After another sigh, he used his creation source to cover Panther before rubbing Caitlin’s head and asking: “Now that we settled that, are you ready? My energy is lacking, so I’m counting on you to match my rate.”

Panther also came out of the energy pool, sitting on the side as she asked: “Can you tell me what you plan on doing then? Also, why did you need my human form?”

“I plan on giving you a soul, or at least try to. Think of it as an artificial soul. Animals were born with only their instincts, but as the energy inside the atmosphere searched for a host, they eventually developed a will of their own with the help of that energy.”

“Still, in the end, you are not linked to the spirit well and only possess a body and a will. That’s why with the creation of the human race, the energy stopped fusing with other animals or plants. They had no soul to dwell in as they did with humans.”

“As for why I wanted you to take human form... I didn’t know if a soul might even be able to form into an animal body.”

This experiment was also crucial for Seth since it confirmed everything he and Hollie had concluded about the spirit well.

After Panther nodded, Seth turned to Caitlin and said: “Since you’re not linked to the spirit well like the treasure of life is, I just need you to supply the life and death energy. Leave everything else to me.”

Caitlin nodded with a serious expression, and Seth teleported everyone inside the underground manor into the same room Leora was resting in the past. Once there, he turned to Panther and said: “I need you to lay down and don’t resist our energies.”

Panther sat down as instructed, taking a deep breath and closing her eyes.

After she was resting comfortably, Seth nodded toward Caitlin and placed both hands on Panther’s abdomen, slowly circulating his lust and perception energies through his body.

Caitlin followed suit, placing her hands next to Seth’s and simultaneously using her life-and-death energy.

Panther’s face turned red, and she began squirming shortly after.

“I’m feeling… strange….”

“Try to hang on. That’s normal.” replied Seth knowing full well what effect his energies would have on someone. Panther was also lucky since his lust energy mainly affected the soul and not the body.

Ten minutes had passed, and Panther’s body was drenched in sweat. She kept rubbing her thighs together with her chest heaving up and down faster and faster. The strangest thing was the peculiar purring noise from her chest, making both Seth and Caitlin have trouble focusing.

Seth was feeling his lust and perception reaching shallow levels, the system also kindly warned him occasionally about it, but no matter how he circled his energies around Caitlin’s, they didn’t seem to want to bond as they were supposed to.

As he was about to give up, Lust whispered in his mind: ‘You can’t fuse multiple wills like that. You must remove any outside will from the energy before it fuses.’

‘How do I do that?’ asked Seth, happy to hear Lust’s voice.

‘Wills are just a controlling tool for souls. A will resides inside a soul, giving it drive, while a soul resides inside a body, moving that body to fulfill the will’s desires. Think of a will as nothing more than a shapeless soul."

“If you use your destruction to cleanse the soul element in those energies, the will controlling them should also be removed.’

Seth looked up at Caitlin. “I’m going to use destruction energy; release your control over the life-and-death energy as I do that.”

“Alright.”

Seth took a deep breath and broke his link with his lust and perception energies inside Panther’s body as he used his destruction to eliminate the soul component inside.

Feeling Seth use his destruction energy, Caitlin also relinquished her control, pulling back her hands simultaneously.

“It’s starting to hurt….” Muttered Panther while panting, opening her glazed eyes and fixing them on Seth.

“Hang on a little more. My destruction energy might be uncomfortable, but you won’t get hurt.”

Two more minutes passed until Seth thoroughly cleansed the life, death, lust, and perception energies. Devoid of a will controlling them, the energies began revolving against one another on their own, making Seth heave a relieved sigh and pull his hands back.

Focusing on the exhausted Panther, Seth wiped the sweat from her forehead and asked: “How are you feeling?”

“Fuzzy.” Replied Panther, her eyes still unfocused.

Seth nodded and remained with Caitlin by her side, waiting to see if the experiment succeeded.

“ARGH!” Half an hour passed in this manner, a time in which nothing seemed to happen until Panther’s eyes widened, and she released a pained grunt, blood leaking down the side of her mouth.

Seth immediately moved closer to her and asked: “What happened?”

Panther grabbed Seth’s shirt, the veins of her slim hands swelling as she said with a pained voice: “My core. My link to my core is breaking. My core also appears to be shattering.”

‘Lust? What is going on?’

‘Beasts and animals use cores; humans use sources. Cores reside in the beast’s body, while sources eventually fuse with a human’s soul. That’s the reason the beast demigods never managed to form a divinity. They were not even true demigods in that sense.’

‘Humans have a body, a soul, and a will. Adding energy into the mix gives you ascended. Removing the constraints of a body turns ascended into demigods.’

‘The beasts cannot remove the constraints of a body since they don’t have a soul to contain that energy, and their cores have been created to facilitate the containment of more energy inside a physical body; that’s where their spherical form comes into play, but it also doesn’t allow for fusion with a soul.’

‘Now, the energy inside is too much for her soul to control, so her soul rejects the core. If she relinquishes the core, the energy will dissipate, and she will be able to remain a human, but she can also choose to die in body and keep her soul.’

‘Since her soul is still stabilizing, once she relinquishes her body, she could absorb the vortex at the center of her core inside her soul and form a shell around it to create a source of energy. The same process in which an ascended becomes a demigod, but since her soul’s form is not stable, she can hasten the process by simply absorbing the energy inside.’

‘But she doesn’t have the knowledge needed to form a source.’ added Seth.

‘She’s a demigod and can still control her energy. All she needs is to see a source’s form, and she’ll be able to understand what to do.’

Seth turned quickly to Caitlin and said: “Dissipate your body and absorb your energy inside your source.’

Hearing the gravity in Seth’s voice, Caitlin quickly did as Seth told her.

Seth lifted Panther’s head, directing her gaze to Caitlin’s source, and said: “You need to let your body die. Once you return to your core, you must form it into a source, just as Caitlin’s.”

Panther fought through the pain the rejection of her soul brought her and carefully looked at the source hovering before her. Due to the Council having watched over the continent for a long time, she already knew how a source was formed and immediately understood what to do.

“I understand.”

With her words, her body began turning into stone before crumbling into dust over the small bed while her soul drifted away toward her core.

———

Deep in the maze beneath the Cursed Kingdom, in the core chamber, a feeble soul entered the core hovering at the center. The chains all around moved away, revealing the giant sphere underneath.

The sphere slowly began cracking until its outer shell fell to the ground, revealing the vortex spinning at its center.

The shell on the ground turned to dust before floating back up, slowly forming a circle around the vortex.

Once the vortex was complete, an earthquake lasting more than five minutes spread throughout the Curse Kingdom and its neighboring kingdoms.

At the earthquake’s epicenter, earth energy was wildly passing through the newly created source, slowly giving form to a young woman around it.

Panther fell to her knees; her eyes closed as the chains all around trembled as if to pay respects to their master.

When her eyes opened, the earthquakes stopped, as did the rambling of the chains.

Lifting her hand, a smile spread along Panther’s lips as she could feel the endless lifespan coursing through her newly formed soul. She was no longer bound to a mortal body.

She could even feel the calling the Council members had always dreamt of hearing themselves. She knew that once she called for it, it would come—the Tower of God.

“No.” Taking a deep breath, Panther cleared her mind of the temptation the tower brought her and focused on her mission.

Extending her hands outwards, the chains stuck in the walls dashed at her, and she allowed her energy to flow freely through them, filling the entire underground prison.

The flesh and bones filling the walls burst apart, revealing the clean and polished tunnels she had once created. The horrors roaming freely through their prison got dragged along the tunnels, struggling and screaming as the chains brought them back to their cages.

Once she had dealt with the most pressing matter, Panther’s eyes turned toward the north, where death energy spread through her seal. With a slap of her palm on the ground, all the northern tunnels caved in, crushing the ascended acting as hosts for the treasure of death within.

With everything taken care of, her body slowly dissipated, and only her source was left, the chains locking the horrors in place linking to its outer shell. A whip of earth energy traveled through the ground not long after, traveling across the continent and manifesting before Seth and Caitlin.

Forming a new body out of her energy, Panther fell to one knee before the stunned Caitlin and smiling Seth.

“You have saved my life and allowed me to fulfill the goal every member of the Council always had. This favor, I will never forget it.”